A Response to the Primates Meeting in Rome

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, Chairman of the Gafcon Primates Council pic.twitter.com/6RodpHUpkd

— Gafcon (@GafconGBE) May 6, 2024

You may find the link to the text of the full letter there.

It was not so long ago that the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 Ross Perot had the best showing for a third-party candidate in a presidential election since 1912 on a platform of fiscal probity. Two years later the Republicans seized control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, with the first item in their “Contract with America” being a pledge to balance the budget. Bill Clinton easily won re-election two years after that, in part by negotiating spending cuts with Republicans that led to America’s first surpluses in a generation.

At the start of this fiscal hullabaloo, in 1992, America’s net debt amounted to 46% of gdp. Today it has reached 96% of gdp. For the past five years, under first Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, the federal deficit has averaged 9% of gdp a year. The International Monetary Fund says that America’s borrowing is so vast it is endangering global financial stability. s&p and Fitch, two credit-rating agencies, have already downgraded America’s debt; a third, Moody’s, is threatening to.

Yet concern about deficits and debt has all but vanished from American politics. Voters seem relaxed about the subject, which barely registers in pollsters’ tallies of the biggest problems facing the country. Although Messrs Biden and Trump both tut-tut about the dire fiscal outlook from time to time, neither has made improving it a centrepiece of his campaign. On the contrary, both would in all likelihood add to America’s debts, by spending more in Mr Biden’s case and by taxing less in Mr Trump’s. Neither candidate dares breathe a word about trimming spending on health care and pensions for the elderly, which account for the biggest share of the federal budget and are set to grow still bigger as the population ages. Yet a fiscal reckoning is coming, whether the candidates admit it or not—and given the politicians’ denial, it may take an unexpected form.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

In the 1990s the hottest topic in American politics was the ballooning national debt. In 1992 this amounted to 46% of GDP; today it has reached 96%. Yet Joe Biden and Donald Trump are all but ignoring this https://t.co/S3QseVdONa 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 5, 2024

“It may be that God is destroying the Church of England and who am I to stand in his way?

“The real tragedy would be if, in this traumatic, confusing time, if all of the evangelicals and the broader Orthodox group fall out with each other… if we can bear with each other in our different strategies, then that will be what we need (in whatever the future in England is going to be), whether that’s within the Church of England or outside.

Charlie Skrine, the senior minister of All Souls Langham Place London, says his church (and other evangelical churches in the UK) are in a world of pain at the moment over the growing split in the Church of England.

Mr Skrine, who is speaking at the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion Conference in Sydney, says All Souls is united in it’s commitment to biblical teaching on sexual ethics, but divided on what the best response should be.

Read and listen to it all.

European intelligence agencies have warned their governments that Russia is plotting violent acts of sabotage across the continent as it commits to a course of permanent conflict with the west. 

Russia has already begun to more actively prepare covert bombings, arson attacks and damage to infrastructure on European soil, directly and via proxies, with little apparent concern about causing civilian fatalities, intelligence officials believe. 

While the Kremlin’s agents have a long history of such operations — and launched attacks sporadically in Europe in recent years — evidence is mounting of a more aggressive and concerted effort, according to assessments from three different European countries shared with the Financial Times. 

Read it all (registration or subscription).

"Russia has already begun to more actively prepare covert bombings, arson attacks and damage to infrastructure on European soil, directly and via proxies, with little apparent concern about causing civilian fatalities, intelligence officials believe." https://t.co/tnk6bFTII5

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) May 6, 2024

Consumers are voting with their wallets—and some of America’s best-known food brands are losing.

Coffee drinkers are leaving Starbucks’s loyalty program. Chips Ahoy cookies are lingering longer on grocery-store shelves. Fewer customers are ordering at fast-food drive-throughs and kiosks, pressuring companies such as Wendy’s and McDonald’s.

For about three years following the Covid-19 pandemic, food companies pushed through a series of sharp price increases, saying they needed to recoup their own rising costs—and that consumers would adjust to stick with their favorite brands. As a result, the portion of U.S. consumers’ income spent on food has reached the highest level in three decades.

Now, some consumers are hitting their limits. Restaurant chains and some food manufacturers are reporting sliding sales or slowing growth that they attribute to consumers’ inability—or refusal—to pay prices that are in some cases a third higher than prepandemic times.

Read it all.

“I’m done.” Consumers, fed up with rising prices at restaurants and supermarkets, pull back from Chips Ahoy cookies, Starbucks coffee and other big food brands. https://t.co/FiKOPd0u4G

— WSJ Business News (@WSJbusiness) May 5, 2024

God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

There are many high roads and passes in the Dale, but perhaps the best known is this one. Learn more 👇https://t.co/lhefQzs6H2

📸 Buttertubs Pass | #MondayMotivation #YorkshireDales pic.twitter.com/0Eaygx9vuR

— Yorkshire Dales National Park (@yorkshire_dales) May 6, 2024

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat there; and the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”

–Matthew 13:1-9

It is a special thing to climb up Glastonbury Tor in the dense fog and as you get to the top it clears so that you can see for miles around. Trees peeping through the mist as you listen to the birdsong. This is the view from the top looking down towards the Somerset levels. pic.twitter.com/3px2x4CTZB

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) May 6, 2024